Next time on Third Eye Cinema: Florida exploitation pioneer Bill Grefe!

Breaking into the film industry at the very dawn of the Florida “right to work” boom (which gave us numerous drive in independent gems from the likes of Doris Wishman, Herschell Gordon Lewis, Barry Mahon, Harry Kerwin and Sande Johnson), Bill learned his craft and honed his skills “on the job”, producing such well remembered grindhouse favorites as Sting of Death, Death Curse of Tartu, Stanley, Mako: the Jaws of Death and the unforgettable Impulse(aka Want a Ride, Little Girl?) with William Shatner and Harold “Oddjob” Sakata before moving on from indie film into the lucrative world of advertising!

Everyone’s favorite European metal labels (all 8 of ’em!) have kept busy since I posted the 3 part Spring Roundup music reviews a while back, so here we proudly present another batch of indie, underground and raw black, stoner, power, pagan and traditional metal on tap for your delectation. Be prepared to be scared…

And so we come to another installment of the early Octave Mirbeau; a further entry in his de facto trilogy of semi-autobiographical novels of doomed young men bearing some measure of the author’s own persona and past experience, albeit with each coming to some untoward early demise – a closure which the long lived Mirbeau himself would be spared.

Sebastien Roch follows the titular character, a sensitive, artistically inclined and intellectually curious young man whose only crime was to be born of a petty bourgeoise with aspirations to higher social status, through the course of a brief and tragic life – a life driven and hemmed in by the invisible fences of a ridiculous and hypocritical society and those who live by its mores.

As bandleader and driving force behind Black Tape for a Blue Girl, Sam has been at the very forefront of the darkwave, dark cabaret and ambient side of the gothic scene since the release of The Rope way back in 1986!

Regular readers of the Journal should be well aware that outside the storied J.K. Huysmans, probably my favorite author of the fin de siecle French Decadent movement is Octave Mirbeau, scribe of the unforgettable confessional Le Calvaire and the mind blowing social critique that is Torture Garden. But one work we had not yet addressed is perhaps the one he is best known for. This is a story which had been filmed twice, and by two much beloved directors of the French Nouvelle Vague; often considered his literary apotheosis by the powers that be.

Next time on Third Eye Cinema: explore the darkness of occult initiation with Adam Zaars of Tribulation!

Best known for his two legendary albums with retro-traditional metal revivalists Enforcer, Adam and his band Tribulation burst onto the scene with the much feted modern death metal classic The Horror, 4 years past!Continue reading →